In an attempt to effectively track home-quarantined citizens and ensure they are staying at home, a mobile application named Saiyam has been developed by the Pune Municipal Corporation under the Smart Cities Missions (SCM).
The city administration has taken steps, through the use of technology solutions, to monitor home quarantined citizens. The city administration has appointed dedicated teams for five zones to conduct a follow-up with people under home quarantine on a daily basis.
The Smart Cities Mission, which was launched in 2016, aims to transform 100 cities into smart cities by 2020.
According to a press release, the teams will check on people who have recently returned from international trips and those discharged after treatment for COVID-19. Accordingly, the teams will seek updates from quarantined people on their health status and details of persons in contact with them. For persons sporting the home quarantine stamp, the teams will check if separate food, bed, utensils, clothes and washrooms are provided to them.
The teams will check if those under home quarantine have downloaded the Saiyam Mobile application. The mobile application has GPS tracking so that whenever quarantined citizens leave their homes, the administration is alerted and the local ward or the local police station is informed, who then visit the family.
All the home quarantined citizens are given the mandate to download the app and install it.
These identified citizens are advised to keep the GPS feature on the device always switched-on and the mobile device should be switched-on throughout the day, during the quarantine period.
Citizens’ movements can be monitored centrally real-time from the monitoring cell and are marked as red, yellow or green.
Red signifies that the person has ventured out for longer duration; yellow signifies that the person has limited movements and green signifies that the person is confined to house limits.
OpenGov reported earlier that the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) has developed a COVID-19 Sample Collection Kiosk (COVSACK).
The unit has been developed by DRDL in consultation with the doctors of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), based in Hyderabad. The COVSACK is a kiosk for use by healthcare workers for taking COVID-19 samples from suspected infected patients. Patients under test walk into the kiosk and nasal or oral swabs are taken by a healthcare professional from outside through the built-in gloves.
According to a press release, the kiosk is automatically disinfected without the need for human involvement, making the process free of infection spread. The shielding screen of the kiosk cabin protects the health care worker from the aerosols or droplet transmission while taking the sample. This reduces the requirements of PPE changes by healthcare workers.
After the patient leaves the kiosk, four nozzle sprayers mounted in the kiosk cabin disinfect the empty chamber by spraying disinfectant mist for a period of 70 seconds. It is further flushed with water and UV light disinfection. The system is ready for next use in less than two minutes.
